Graham Thorpe dies aged 55. Very sad. Averaged 45 in 100 tests. However that excellent average should be taken into context of the era of oppo bowlers. Warne and Mcgrath, Ambrose and Walsh, Waqar and Wasim, Donald and Pollock, Murali. One of England’s finest batters imo. RIP
What a wonderful performance by Sifan Hassan to win the Women’s marathon today after tremendous efforts in the 5000 and 10000 metres. Until I checked, I never realised what she has achieved in her career. In the last eleven years she has won 16 Gold Medals in various Championships at distances from 1500 metres to the marathon, including many world record times. At 31 years of age, surely the outstanding athlete in the history of women’s athletics.
Not the best day or week for the England cricket team as Sri Lanka took the honours with a thumping 8 wicket victory and a well deserved one as that. I know that most of us NOT606ers who have posted out thoughts to them winning, the win over in Pakistan being one such occasion, but when you lose with an inept performance and brain-dead batting, well you deserve to get as much pelters as you get...!! I'm not sure that Pope deserves the stick he is getting, he is the stand-in captain after all, and I'm sure that he wasn't given free reign to captain as he wanted to. But, in saying all of that, he's no captain in my eyes...!! My main beef lies with the batters and the village pub cricket shots that some of them played, sometimes with success, sometimes not, and with opposition analysts watching every ball nowadays such is the nature of coaching, I doubt the Indians and Aussies were quaking in their spikes...!! Yes Test match cricket can bore the pants off you, especially if you prepare a dead turner, but staying at the crease and building up a score is the success winning Test Match cricket. Always has and always will. The fact that England had numerous occasions to post a 2nd innings score that would have snuffed out the Sri Lankans and a potential 3-0 clean sweep will not be lost on the other teams that we will play in the near future. Once a good team smells blood...!! With the recent passing of Graham Thorpe, a man who could entertain as much as grind an innings out, it seems that we no longer make or nurture that type of player anymore, all bar Joe Root, and they are still relevant today as they were 10 or more years ago. The bottom line is that if your gonna lose, do it trying to get a result, not look as if it's a pub village game where 6 and out is the order of the day...
“building up a score is the success winning Test Match cricket. “ Good morning, Red. Can’t agree with you really. For me, bowlers win test matches. If you had to sacrifice either Joe Root or Jimmy Anderson in a test match, then Joe would have to go. All right, I’m biased being a fellow Burnleyite like Jimmy, but you have to bowl ‘em out to win.
Of course Tam you need to take 20 wickets to win a match, unless your declaration comes up short, the point i was trying to say was that big runs on the boars 9 times out of 10 win almost make sur you don't lose... Oh, and I sort of agree with your Joe/Jimmy choice, it just depends on the track as swinging it over on the sub-continent wasn't Jimmy's best for the King of Swing now was it...
So, Harry Kane is to be the newest English footballer to reach the 100 cap mark, and well done to him for reaching it. His record is excellent, 66 goals from 99 played is as good as it gets really, despite some of the easier nations that he gets to play against, it still stacks up. He isn't the most aesthetically pleasing footballer to watch in my eyes, sometimes looks a little bit cumbersome but he knows where the net is and that's the real fact. Good luck to him, and to England, because if he's still scoring, England are winning...(hoping that we don't concede a rook load of goals at the back...)
